First impressions matter. The opening seconds of ‘Beware of the Gods’, the first track on The Last Punks on Earth remind me of ‘Corrosion’ by Ministry. As such, my attention is well and truly grabbed, even before the album breaks. And when it does break, it’s a shouty, snotty, snarling drum-machine driven punk racket reminiscent of early Revolting Cocks that comes hammering from the speakers. Combining gritty, overdriven guitars and pounding, insistent mechanised beats with aggressive vocals and surging electronic noise and grinding synths, it’s not pretty.

‘We Are Freaks in the Sky’ has that classic Wax Trax! sound all over it, while ‘Sarah’s Song’ is an exemplar of the full-tilt industrialised Eurodisco of the late 80s and early 90s. KMFDM is a fair reference point for the driving, danceable technoindustrial nihilism that defines The Last Punks on Earth.

There’s little to no respite over the course of the album’s ten tracks, which offer up a savage and bleak postapocalyptic cultural worldview. Ok, so the name might evoke the blank postmodern irony of Nathan Barley, as might the band’s image and sound, but their brutal genre-clashing noise is exactly the music that these fucked-up times demand. The darkest dystopian fictions have become our reality, and on The Last Punks on Earth Syd.31 capture the zeitgeist with a violence, venom and vitality that’s pure and compelling.

The Hum is the first ever solo album by Marc Heal and his first full-length release since the year 2000. He has been a presence in electronic music since the late 1980s when his band Westwon toured with Gary Numan and recorded with Colin Thurston.

His next band, Cubanate, then achieved success in the industrial scene in the 1990s with four acclaimed albums. Hits such as ‘Oxyacetylene’ and ‘Bodyburn’ crossed over to metal and mainstream audiences, with the former achieving Single of the Week in both Kerrang! and Melody Maker. The band later signed to the Chicago based label Wax Trax!

in its final years, while also gaining worldwide exposure when Sony used four of their songs as the lead tracks on the best-selling Gran Turismo console game. ‘Body Burn’ was also featured in The Sopranos and the Mortal Kombat movie. They toured with The Sisters of Mercy, Gary Numan, Front 242, Front Line Assembly, Fear Factory, Sheep On Drugs, PIG and more. Marc also worked with Jean-Luc Demeyer of Front 242, the duo making two albums as C-TEC.

Marc appeared to remain creatively silent for many years after the demise of Cubanate, but was in fact running Fortress Studios in London and working in television and advertising, writing documentaries for the BBC and Sky.

Pefacing the release of The Hum on 11 November 2016 through Armalyte Industries, Marc presents ‘Adult Fiction’. Watch the video here: